


Met In Thee Tonight

by A_Candle_For_Sherlock



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Christmas Eve, M/M, Minific, Sussex, Watson's Woes WAdvent, and doggos, unadulterated fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Candle_For_Sherlock/pseuds/A_Candle_For_Sherlock
Summary: At home for Christmas in Sussex, Watson is sentimental, and Holmes is happy.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 49
Kudos: 159
Collections: Watson's Woes WAdvent 2019





	Met In Thee Tonight

In the last of the light, Christmas Eve descending, I walked about the house, drawing the curtains. Holmes was somewhere outside, calling in the dogs. There was snow in the air. The rooks had gone silent in the trees - the weather would break soon. The house prepared against the night, I stood at the kitchen sink, looking out across the fields, and saw him coming towards home - gesturing and laughing as our good dogs leapt about him. I could not hear him, but I could well imagine the sound of that laugh.  
  
I drew the kitchen curtains too and took myself into the sitting room, where the shadows smelled of pine and fir. We had hung great green boughs over the mantle, the windows and the doors, and in the corner we’d installed a small but bountiful tree to preside in festivity over the room, shimmering in the firelight. I had wrapped it in garlands of oranges and berries and beads with the help of the cook. Holmes had been amused but indulgent, as he always is when I approach some kind of domesticity.  
  
I turned up the lamps, and settled myself in my chair, facing the warmth of the fire; took up my paper, and waited.  
  
He arrived: heralded first by the sound of the door opening at the back of the house, and by the pants and delighted whines and scrapping of the dogs, as they discovered and set to the dinner I’d put down for them in the pantry. Holmes, kicking his boots against the sill, scolded them for their haste; Holmes, grumbling through the kitchen and the hall about the chill in his fingers and the mud in the yard, seemed to me to brighten the very air with his complaints. I waited. Stopping the doorway, he quieted; my back was to it, but I could feel his gaze.  
  
His steps approached. A kiss dropped into my hair - a strong hand settled onto my shoulder, and then lifted to brush my neck, delicate, attentive. His fingers were cold; I shuddered as they crossed my pulse, and he laughed.  
  
“The dogs all right?” I said, and the cool touch lifted.  
  
“Incorrigible as ever,” he said. “Pleased with themselves. Delighted by the chicken drippings in their dinner. You spoil them.”  
  
“I know,” I said, and he laughed again. I heard his step retreat toward the corner where the Strad lay waiting. Since we had come to the country, he had not misused his instrument as he’d been wont. He never plucked at it purposelessly, nor subjected me to his tuneless thinking-compositions. When he needed sorting he would slip out the back, and I would see him hours later, coming up from in the back lanes, followed by both the dogs, with an armful of good things from the garden or the woods. He would come inside with colour in his cheeks, whistling under his breath. And the violin was not abandoned; in the evenings he still played for me.  
  
He tuned his instrument, discordant, pizzicato. I had heard the notes a thousand times, and loved them, for the music I knew was coming after. It was strange, to think of us then, young and at war with the world; strange to think we were not young now. Strangest to have won a little peace. After all our battles, I had not expected to willingly lay down my sword. I had not imagined this: retreat, and rest. A house under the open sky. Time enough to study, to write, to keep a garden, to keep one another’s company. Time enough to grow old with him.  
  
He came to stand before me, the fire behind him haloing his silhouette in golden light; as slender and proud in outline as I’d first seen him, though with a stiffer stance. He lifted the instrument to his shoulder; smiling, filled the air with long-familiar airs and newborn improvisations, old battle songs, and carols of peace. I listened, and thought that the game we had played had been well worth the candle.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas Eve, lovelies.


End file.
